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Monday, 12 October 2009

TUTBURY CRAFTS GRAND OPENING (or how to have your faith in human nature smashed and then renewed in one hour)

Well I have been promising this for a couple of days, so here it is. I have bored you all to tears with the build up to the opening of my Craft Shop and it finally happened on Saturday 10th October. Despite a few hiccups it was all I hoped for and we had a wonderful day. But first the hiccups.

As many of you will know, I had been on holiday for a week prior to the opening and was due back on the Wednesday night. I had a full list of jobs to be done in preparation for the opening and so Thursday and Friday were fully scheduled. What I hadn't planned for was our plane suffering technical problems for which engineers had to been flown out from the UK to fix and no other flights were available. To cut a long story short, which included getting on the plane, getting off again, getting bussed to an hotel, getting very little sleep before getting on the bus to go back to the airport, sitting around for another 3 hours before finally getting on the plane and taking off. Suffice to say, we suffered a full 24 hour delay and didn't get back until Thursday night. A great deal of panic texting was involved to my friend back in the UK, without whom we would never have been ready by Saturday morning.

So Friday was spent rushing around trying to squeeze 2 days work into one day and when I finally flopped into bed Friday night I was exhausted but excited.

Saturday morning came and at 8am I walked over the shop. On the way, I noticed that another shop in the Mews had 2 smashed windows, slightly worried I continued around the corner, only to find that all my beautiful terracotta flower pots had gone. But things were a little strange, there was clear evidence of the pots having been removed from the walls and thrown into the middle of the road, but all the plants had been gathered up and carefully stacked outside the shop doorway. The worst of the broken pottery had been gathered and placed carefully next to them. I immediately burst into tears! The planters had been up for 4 weeks, and to get vandalised during the night before opening seemed malicious. However, it was just bad luck, it transpired that a group of drunk youths coming back from a party had wreaked havoc throughout the village in the middle of the night smashing car and shop windows and throwing things around. So just losing the pots didn't seem so bad.

However, I refused to be beaten, so back to the house and raid the shed to see what I could find. I would have planters outside the shop, even if they didn't match and the plants looked a bit battered. By 9am, all the plants had been repotted into a strange assortment of old baskets and pots, ribbons attached and we were back on track.

Then the gentleman who lives in a flat (apartment) above the premises next door to my shop appeared and explained that he had heard a commotion in the street at about 3am, looked out of his window and had realised what had happend. Knowing it was my grand opening in the morning, he had then got out of bed, gone into the street and collected all the plants up, carefully placing them by the shop in the hope that we would be able to rescue the situation. The gentleman in question is Pez (see below pictured with a fellow trader from the Mews, showing off the Grand Opening banner). Our Hero. My faith in human nature was firmly back in place.At 10am we were ready and I took great pleasure in putting up the 'OPEN' sign. A very small sip of Champagne and photographs followed, but before we could even say Cheers, our first customers arrived!

There follows a whole bunch of photos of the shop (I will admit that the interior ones were taken today as there were too many people in the shop for photos on Saturday). We had a wonderful day, were incredibly busy for most of it and sold loads of stuff.

The best point in the day was when I turned around and saw my eldest Sister, Sue, walking into the shop. She lives 150 miles away and I had no idea she was coming. I burst into tears for the second time that day. Quite a record for me as I am definitely not a cryer.

All in all a great day and well worth all the hard work. I must say here an now, that there is no way I could have achieved all this in such a short time without help, so here is the roll of honour:

My friend Pip who has worked so hard with me to achieve this, put in so many hours and put up with me.

My wonderful husband, who allowed me to take this risk and was prepared to put up the capital. He has also been a great help with decorating, fixing things, putting up with me and served drinks and chatted to customers all day long.

My lovely stepson, who worked so hard to get the shop decorated and ready and who also programmed the till for me (it had beaten me!).

And everybody else, the other traders in the mews, local people in the village, all of you out there who have been so supportive. Thanks!

First of all I must apologise for the lateness in adding this comment, I have only today realised that I had overlooked doing so previously when I first read this entry.

So a belated congratulations to you on the grand opening of your crafty shop. I am so pleased for you that in the end, the day was a success despite the hiccups.

I fully understand the anguish and frustration of the flight delay, I have been in that same position a few years ago as we returned from our first visit to Australia. You must have been frantic though with all the final preparations needing to be completed by Saturday morning.